The present invention relates to a photographic printer for making enlarged prints and more particularly to a photographic printer for making enlarged elemental prints of portions of a single frame of a photographic film which are used to form a large size photographic picture display.
Conventional photographic printers have negative carriers disposed between a lamp unit and a photographic paper on which a negative film is placed to make an enlarged print of a single frame thereof. One problem with making an enlarged print of a single frame of a standard format of negative film on a large size photographic paper is the printing cost, which increases as printing size or magnification ratio increases. Another problem is the magnification range of such large prints which depends on the sizes of photographic papers commercially available.
These problems can be solved by making enlarged prints of portions, into which a single frame of a negative film is nominally divided, on a regular size of photographic paper to provide elemental prints of a large size photographic picture to be displayed. The enlarged elemental prints of the respective portions are arranged in a plane to form a single picture, thereby providing a large size photographic picture display. However, it is quite hard to provide such enlarged elemental prints of the portions with conventional photographic printers.